Adaptation
by 7.06andcounting
Summary: ... because life ought to be about more than just survival. And Tim needs to learn that. No matter how hard the lessons.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: S.E. Hinton owns Tim Shepard, no matter how much I wish otherwise. Ditto anyone else you recognize from The Outsiders.**

**This is the sequel to 'Natural Selection' and crosses over with my Evie universe. (Spoilers for the outcome of 'Love Me two Times', if that kind of thing bothers you!)**

**What you may not know, if you don't read my Evie stories, is that the reason 'Natural Selection' ended when it did is because my Tim was arrested and given the choice of prison, or enlisting in the Army and going to Vietnam, in January 1966, when he was 19. He took the Army deal.**

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><p><em><strong>Summer 1972<strong>_

It oughta make me smile, I guess, when I hear where I can find him. Maybe the place, but especially the fact that he's working there.

The old lot looks different. The lumber company must be doing good; they took over the space next door too, got an office building, customer counter, all of that. I figure I ain't gonna find him there though, so I walk into the yard. They put up some new sheds where we used to have the bonfire. There's a forklift parked where I fought Morris.

"Help ya with something?" I can hardly hear the old guy over the noise of electric saws and whatever. I tell him who I'm looking for. He pulls a face. "_Curly?_ We got a _Jerry_ Shepard, that who you mean?" He's squinting at me. Surely we can't look that different, even now, he's gotta see that's who I mean.

I follow him over to the open sided workshop and he hits a button on one of the upright beams. One of the machines eases to a halt.

"The fuck?" The machine operator looks up as the belt stops and the timber he was pulling towards him stays put in the saw. He pushes a pair of goggles up over his forehead, wiping sweat off his face in the same movement. "_Tim?_"

I vaguely hear the old guy saying something about 'five minutes' break', but I ain't looking at him. I'm looking at the face in front of me. It's like one of those mirrors you get at the fairground; me, but not me. Not my nose but, apart from my scar, that was always the biggest difference. I guess he's still never gotten his broken.

Curly walks forwards, out of the shed. Hell, he might be taller than me.

"What're you doing here?"

"Nice to see you too."

He don't crack a smile. "What you expect? A fucking ticker tape parade? It's been four years..."

"Exactly."

"..._with no word_."

"I wrote when I got my discharge."

He makes a scoffing noise. "Coupla postcards, no return address?" His face turns hard. "You seen Ma? Angel?"

"How'd ya think I found you?"

There's a couple of seconds where we regard each other in silence. Then he shakes himself. "I gotta get back to it. You sticking around, or you passin' through?"

He might as well have slugged me. I tell him I'm around.

He nods. "You know 'Crazy Eights', over on Second?" I tell him I can find it. "I'll be there after six." He turns around and starts up the machine, pulling on his goggles.

xxXxx

'Crazy Eights' is a dive. About the only thing going for it is that it seems to have a decent ID checker; there ain't no kids in here. At six, most of the clientele is after work drinkers, men with tired eyes and heavy shoulders.

I order two beers, because, despite the cool reception, I believe that he'll show. I sit at the bar and I'm about half way down my glass when he walks in. He nods hello at the barman and a Coke appears in front of him.

"That's yours." I indicate the second beer. He shakes his head slightly, looks over his shoulder, scanning for a booth, walks over without a word. I take both beers with me. Damned if he's gonna refuse to drink with me. What the hell did I do that was so bad? Wasn't my choice to go away in the first place.

Although I guess it ain't about the going away, it's the staying away that's got him hacked.

I push the olive branch over to his side of the table. He pushes it back.

"Curly, c'mon. You that pissed with me, man? You won't lemme buy you a drink?" I'm pretty sure I don't sound as hurt as I actually am.

"Buy me this." He lifts the Coke and swallows.

"Jeez. You wanna little umbrella in it?"

He shrugs, looks away. Then he seems to decide something and he swings his eyes back onto me, takes a deep breath. "I don't drink no more."

I snort.

"I ain't joking." He digs in his pocket and puts a poker chip on the table. Only it ain't a poker chip. "Ten months this time." He rubs the chip for luck, then flips it up, like a coin toss, and stuffs it back in his pocket, shrugging almost shyly.

The words are out before I think them through, which ain't like me at all. "You ain't a freaking alcoholic, you're twenty one years old!"

Curly bites off a laugh. "Twenty _two_. And I was an alcoholic at fourteen, man. You don't get it."

The world shifts under me, just a little. "'_This time'_?"

"Huh?"

"You said '_ten months this time'_..."

"Yeah. Kind of a false start, when I first got out, it was tough. But I'm on it, this time. Ain't goin' back."

I ain't sure if he means 'back inside' or 'back on the booze'. I don't like that I don't know what he went in for, or even when. He's watching me, I realize, the way I used to watch people. He acknowledges that I see him doing it, that he knows what I'm thinking, and he explains:

"Couple of years back. I got pulled over speeding and my passenger was drinking. Nah...we was both drinkin', but she was seventeen, so they threw that at me too. _Corrupting a minor_. Added in a coupla old warrants and I got a stretch in County. Best thing that ever happened to me."

I stare.

"They got the program there. Proper counselors. Gave me a chance to get some stuff outta my head."

I've started in on the second beer without noticing. Curly notices. He sits back, lights a weed, offers me one. I take it.

"Where've you been, Tim?"

Where have I been?

Almost seven years since I lived in this town. Six since I was here. I remember that week I was on leave.

"Angel ever say any more about that kid we worked over?"

Curly frowns. "Who? Oh, the kid we thought cut her hair? Wasn't him. He took the fall for his buddy."

Christ. We could have killed that kid. I wanted to kill that kid. I was on my way over _there_ and I was ready to start the killing. I thought.

"You been inside all this time?" I look up in surprise at the question. He shrugs. "Ma figured that was it. When the postcards stopped."

"No. I ain't been inside. Not since I got out the Army." _Four years._

"You shitting me?"

I shake my head, finishing the last of my beer. Not enough sky in prison, I never chanced it once. But I couldn't put into words the why of it, not if I wanted to.

It's warming up in the bar. I slip off my jacket without thinking, signal the barman.

"Nice ink." Curly waits for my eyes to meet his. He's right, the work is good. Covers most of my arm now. But it don't hide all the scars. "You get that done over there? In Vietnam?"

"Some. Some back here." Any time I still feel the burning of the long gone shrapnel and I convince myself that this time, seeing the tattoo, not the scars, will make me forget the smell of hot metal in my skin. My side itches, just at that thought. Curly got better at reading people, I guess, because he asks:

"Was it bad?"

"Bad enough."

"You get a Purple Heart?"

"Yeah. Think I oughta keep it in my pocket?" He winces at my swipe at his sobriety chip. I don't even know where the fucking medal is. Don't think it even made it back to the unit with me, once I was out of the field hospital.

Curly takes off his denim jacket. He does it slowly, deliberately. Puts his arm on the table.

Curly's scar is neater in a way. But more horrific in its placing, the way it tells its story, arching from one side of his right wrist down and then across to the other side of his arm. I'd forgotten he was left handed.

"Twenty first birthday present to myself."

I don't have the words to ask. I don't want to know the answer. I seen people do it quick with guns, watched others do it slow, with drugs. Seen a man come through hell, only to get home and walk in front of a semi-trailer. I know the answer.

"You think Vets are the only ones screwed up in the head?" He's a fucking mind reader these days, this kid brother of mine. I tell him no, I don't think that. Because I don't want him to explain.

There's a pause as the barman delivers another round. Beer and a Coke. Fuck me. I take a swallow.

"Weird thing happened, when I went through AA. You know about the steps?" He's going to explain anyway.

Yeah, I know about the steps. Janssen tried it, when we was in Arizona. Or was it New Mexico? Either way, he never seemed to make the connection that the only time he had a drink problem was when he was jonesing for a hit. Never was the alcohol that was the problem. Not sure the semi was the solution, either.

Curly keeps his voice low. "Supposed to 'make amends', right? Only you wasn't here."

I look up at him in surprise. "What you got to make amends to me for?"

"That was the weird thing. I spent so long feeling like it oughta be the other way around."

_What?_

"I was still carryin' around what happened. In the reformatory, when I was thirteen." He leans back in the booth, exhaling. "That's what I was drinking for, before. To forget. Never worked. Something in jail that last time brought it back – nothing that happened to me, but something I saw. So I figured I'd let it all go..." He rubs the scar absently.

I've sunk almost all my beer. I fish in my jacket for my smokes. Curly says no to the one I offer him. He's waiting for me to say something.

"It wasn't my fault. Not that you went in the reformatory, not that it happened." Jesus, he's got me sounding like a whiny brat. "I tried to help!"

"By getting me laid?"

"Yes!"

"I was just a kid."

"You never complained." We're both getting louder. I sit back, rubbing my temple. I feel a headache starting. This ain't what I came home for. Curly leans forward, his voice quiet again.

"Jesus, Tim. I was scared and lost and you set some blonde nympho on me. I wouldn't have known how to complain, I never talked back to you in those days."

"I was tryin' to help. I thought...maybe, it would show you that you was normal. That whatever happened didn't make you..." I bite the sentence short, sucking on the weed.

"Queer? That what you wanna say? Jesus fucking Christ. Were you trying to show me or yourself? Did you think that was it? Some pervert had his hands on me, I was a lost cause?"

"No. Not that. I didn't mean...An' you never said exactly –"

"You never fucking let me say! You walked away, made it quite clear the subject was closed."

"I...I'm sorry." The words vomit out of me, like bile after a hard night's retching. "I didn't know what to say, what to do. How to help..." I stab the weed into the ash tray, ready to get up and leave. "It wasn't my fault!"

"No. It wasn't. And that's why I gotta say sorry to you after all."

I stare at him. He nods. "That was what I figured out, after this - " He holds up his wrist. "I had to stop and think about what I was pissed about. 'Cause I blamed you for not rescuing me, for not being able to fix it. I was so used to you doin' that for me. I resented that you couldn't do it that time. Somehow some of the blame went on you, not the sick bastard who deserved it." He exhales slow. "You were only sixteen. It wasn't fair on either of us."

Something that's been on my shoulders for a long time falls away. Maybe this _is _what I came home for. Then he repeats his earlier question, real quiet.

"Where've you been, Tim?"

"I had my own shit to deal with."

"And you couldn't do that at home?"

I shrug. "I needed...space." It sounds like some kind of hippie talk, but I actually mean it. I needed sky and horizons and empty roads. Needed to not feel the press of trees and men and noise all around me.

The third beer is gone.

"Is this...like, shitty of me, to drink in front of you?" Christ. I feel..._shy_ in front of my own brother. He shakes his head.

"I wouldn't come in here if I couldn't handle it." There's a strength in him that I never recognized before. Maybe it wasn't there before.

"Okay then." I go to the bar and order a shot, down it, and take another back to the table.

He asks me if I'm staying at Ma's and I tell him I guess I am.

"Well, I wouldn't recommend Angel's, unless you like being woke up at three a.m. by a screaming brat."

"What's her old man like?"

Curly tilts his hand side to side. "Okay. Better than the last one. Works, at least." He hesitates. "You could, maybe, stay at mine."

"You got your own place?"

He changes what he was going to answer, I can see that. He settles for: "Yeah. Ain't much, but you can have the couch." He looks at the empty shot glass in front of me. "You should eat."

Apparently, I am taking advice from my kid brother now.

I realize he's right, when the air hits me as we push out onto the sidewalk. He pauses with his hand on the door of his car, looks at me over the roof.

"Tim? You know I'm glad you're back, right?"

I would have rolled my eyes, shot some sarcastic remark back at him, before. When we was kids. Right now, I can't say anything. I just nod.

He drives us away from the bar. Away from where I would expect food joints. We end up outside some all night diner, over to the expressway. It don't look like the kind of place famous for good eating. There's a lone trucker, hunched over a bucket sized mug of coffee at one end of the counter, and no one serving.

Curly leans right over the counter, snatching up a spoon and throwing it through the hatch into the kitchen, where it clangs against something metal.

"Two with everythin' and put it on my tab!" he yells.

"You don't got a fuckin' tab, kid, you just owe –" Dom breaks off his complaint as he pushes through the swing door, plate in hand. His eyes stay fixed on me as he slides it in front of the trucker, not acknowledging the guy's thanks.

The booze is buzzing in my brain but it ain't enough, I didn't drink enough for this, to handle this. I need to get outside.

Only I don't get to move, because Dom suddenly vaults the counter, sliding in his haste, grabbing me into a hug. He does that thing where a person stands back but grabs the other person's face to look at them close. I ain't imaginary, I guess, because he breaks into a lopsided grin.

"Fuck me, Timmy, you got old." Then he turns and shoves Curly. "You think about calling? Warning me? Or you just figure it'd be a gas to gimme a heart attack?"

_I_ got old? There is no fairground mirror in the world that does this, gives you grey temples and lines at the corner of your eyes.

I move.

The air outside ain't cold enough. Ain't fresh enough. Ain't...something. I need to be on the road, need a horizon to aim for, need -

I hear Janssen, like he was next to me. _Never had nothin' and no one to leave, man, so never had nothin' to come back to. But you, Shep, you got roots. Roots'll pull a man back. No use fighting it._

The fuck did he know about anything? If he wasn't shooting up, he was drinking himself blind and if he wasn't drinking, he was walking in front of a goddamn, lousy -

"Tim?" Someone's hand is steering me over to sit on the rickety picnic bench, leaning me forwards. "Breathe, man, just breathe."

Like it's that easy.

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><p><strong>C'mon then. Can we go for a war damaged Tim? Let me know.<strong>

**If you didn't read 'Natural Selection', Dom is Tim's older brother, but he was illegitimate and brought up by their grandmother as her own child/Tim's uncle. Tim only discovered the truth just before he went in the army, when Dom was in prison, on a long stretch.**


	2. Chapter 2

I'm awake when Dom gets in, just after three in the morning. It's dark and he's trying to be quiet as he closes the apartment door, so I let him know I ain't sleeping.

"Curly in bed?" he asks softly.

I nod. I'm still getting my head around the fact that they share a place.

Dom grabs a beer from the ice box and flops on the other end of the couch from me.

"Well. Here we are, kid." He smiles at me.

I haven't felt like a kid in a long time.

"How come you can have booze around, what with Curly..." Of everything that needs to be covered, this is the least important, but it's what is uppermost in my mind, since Curly told me to help myself to whatever I wanted.

I didn't.

Dom pulls a face. He's tired. "Dunno. Something 'bout there being no challenge if he ain't around temptation? It's his call."

"He really don't drink? At all?"

Dom don't answer. His eyes just rest on me. Eventually he says, "You think if we talk about him enough, we won't get around to you?"

"It's late, man." Like there's any time of the day when that conversation is appealing.

"You're the one wide awake for no reason at this godforsaken hour. I live like this, I always got the late shift."

"Why? Working in a crummy diner...why?"

He sips his beer, shrugs. "Easy enough money? My parole officer got me the job, condition of my release? All the fries I can eat? What's it matter?"

What does it matter? Apart from the fact that it destroys my memory of him as the wild, free, kid who never let anyone tell him what to do. Someone I guess he hasn't been for ten years.

He's been following my thoughts, apparently. He yawns. "It's a different world. Or maybe it's just me that's different. Comes down to this, man. I'll do what it takes. I ain't going back inside. Sooner put a bullet in my head than that."

People do. And for less reason. Bullets. Horse. Unstoppable tons of metal. There are ways and ways.

Dom is still talking, quiet, tired. I force myself to focus.

"...one month of my twenties as a free man. Inside at nineteen, turned thirty years old exactly one month after they let me out. I'm _thirty_, man. That's a chunk of time gone from me. But I spent every day just waiting to get back home. Only when I got here, it wasn't home no more. You was gone, for one thing." He finishes his beer while he readies the question that I know is coming. "Why'd you stay away so long, kid?"

"I..."

I ain't sure if it's the first time tonight that I looked him in the eye, but it seems to be. Seems to do the job of talking, for now at least, because Dom gets a flash of something – sympathy? – on his face and says, "Okay."

He stretches his neck. "I'mma hit the hay." He seems to be waiting on something. He gestures at the couch. "You're sitting on the bed."

Turns out when Curly offered the couch, he neglected to mention it already had an occupant.

I help Dom with the pull out. Curly already gave me a blanket off his bed and Dom has a sleeping bag stashed down behind the couch.

"Bet you slept on worse," he says, just making conversation, as he shakes out the bag. I have. Much worse.

"Tim?"

I realize I wasn't moving. Sometimes the memories are so real that my mind does the moving for me, leaving my body behind.

"Most times, when Curly goes to work, I switch into the bedroom," Dom tells me, "if I'm still sleepin'." He waits for me. I got the choice of sitting in the one armchair or laying down next to him. "Remember that time we stayed all night at the lot, with those redheads...were they sisters or cousins?"

I know what he's trying to do. He's trying to make me comfortable. We were comfortable near each other. Before.

"Cousins, man. Remember, the one had a Texas accent?" I tell him as I kick off my jeans and lie down. He mumbles something, already half asleep, turned away from me, his breathing already slowing.

So many motel rooms. Crappy, pay by the day, efficiencies. Barns, disused gas stations in the middle of nowhere. Fields, more'n once.

So many nights in four years, hearing someone else sleep. Hearing someone else dream.

xxXxx

Three hours sleep ain't much, but it counts as a good night, for me.

Good nights are measured in blank, black, unconsciousness. Bad nights have color and noise and smell.

I wake up when Curly gets to fixing himself breakfast, rattling the two cabinets and ancient icebox that pass for a kitchen, behind a short run of counter, at the other end of the room. He holds up a coffee mug and I nod.

Dom staggers to his feet, cuts through the bedroom to the john. The sound of him pissing like a racehorse comes back loud and clear.

Curly rolls his eyes. "He forgets he's allowed to shut the door." He hands me the coffee, asks me what I'm gonna do with the day.

I think what he's asking is, will I still be around when he gets off work? Part of me is ashamed that I made that possible, that he no longer trusts me. Part of me knows that he's right to wonder; if I need to go, I will. Always another road, another horizon to head for, the clean slate of a new day.

Only, all the roads, all the new days, led here in the end. Once I was on my own. Once there was nothing left but those roots, pulling me back.

I tell Curly that I need to pick up my wheels from Ma's and then I need to get a hold of some tools, make some repairs. I let him think that I _can't _leave, until the repairs are done. He advises me on where to go.

"You wanna have dinner?" he asks, trying for a casual tone. I hate myself for making things need to be forced to be casual between us. I nod, ask if we should meet at that bar again, same time.

Curly pauses. "Have to make it seven or so. I got a meeting after work." I shrug and he pauses, adding, "And maybe we should meet somewhere else. Dom's place? You could get a ride in with him. Or TJ's bar?"

I ain't itching to spend my evening watching the trucks on the expressway. And I don't know where TJ's is. So I tell him we'll meet at Crazy Eights and he can take me somewhere else after that. He agrees, on his way out the door. Responsible member of the working class. My brother. Christ.

I lay back down on the pull out. Dom hasn't reappeared so I figure he's crashed in the bed. There ain't a thing in the way of reading matter in the room, not even a paper. I can't imagine there's anything worth watching on the TV and I don't want to disturb Dom anyway.

It's stifling in the little room, the atmosphere not helped by the fact that there were two of us sleeping in here. I discover that the window will only crack a couple of inches. I lay down again. Then I rip off my t shirt in annoyance at how hot it still is. I'm tired enough, but everything seems to be conspiring against my need for sleep.

And yet it happens.

I know I'm dreaming, in that way you know even while you're in the middle of the dream. I usually do. It don't make it any better.

This time, I know it, because I'm looking for Curly. Each body I turn over, every face I search, it's him I'm trying to find. Which makes no sense. Even when I was there, I never dreamed of him being there with me.

I know I'm running out of time, I can hear the noises in the trees that press around me, I can smell the air, thick with nitro and burning, hear the yelling and the screaming, taste sweat and blood and fear on my lips.

I reach the last body, knowing it has to be Curly, there ain't nowhere else left to look. I turn it over and it's not him, it's Janssen.

I wake up when I hit the floor. I rolled right off the mattress.

"It's all good, man. You're okay." Dom, his voice low and calm, is watching me steadily from where he sits on their one bar stool, leaning against the kitchen counter.

I'm dripping sweat and panting. I am so far from okay it ain't even funny.

"Here." He hands me a glass of water as I stand up and he retreats to the stool again. "Had a cellmate up at Big Mac for a spell, had dreams, real bad fuckers. He always said not to wake him. Should I've woke you?"

I shake my head, sit on the arm of the couch. I sip the water. Eventually I say, "Sorry."

"Nothin' to be sorry for." He pauses, voice still low. "Looks like Vietnam did a number on you, Timmy."

I ain't about to discuss my dreams with him, with anyone. Janssen knew. All those nights hearing each other sleep. But he was there and his dreams were like mine. To tell anyone else would be to describe the indescribable. Besides, bad enough that the details invade my nights, I don't want them in the days too.

But Dom is looking at my side. He may or may not make the connection to the nightmare I just had, for now he is focused on the web of scars that claw their way around my rib cage.

There ain't a tattoo in the world could cover them up. But I'm gonna keep on trying.

I look around, find the t shirt I discarded earlier, drag it on.

"You don't haveta hide it, man. It's fucked up that you were there. That you got hurt. But it ain't something to be ashamed of."

_When was the last time someone spat in your face, Dom? Called you a warmonger?_

I shrug. Gesture at my old scar, on my face. "Comes a limit, to what the chicks'll go for."

"Tim. _Bro_." Gentle reproach. Disguised as sympathy. He wants to offer me...comfort. Wants to help. The world is divided into the spitters and the would-be helpers. Neither side understands.

Dom tries again. "You wanna talk about it?"

What would I tell him? That the shrapnel cut me, but the blood and brains of a guy I was sharing a smoke with burned me more? That I thought someone was there, thought my buddy had his hand on my forehead, but when I woke up the second time I discovered it was just his hand?

"I got off easy." I dismiss his sympathy roughly. "Two arms, two legs. I came back whole."

One day that lie will sound like I believe it.


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: Where did everyone go? You hated chapter two that much?! Ouch.**

**Anyway, this chapter is the reason I waited to post this fic, in case of crossover readership – spoilers ahead for 'Love Me Two Times'. **

* * *

><p>I have to smile when I see the sign over the workshop door. Curly is a frigging comedian.<p>

"You should check out the new garage down on Independence," is what he said. "Just up from the salvage yard, you remember where that is?" He was smiling as he asked. I thought I knew why. We had some times in there, boosting parts. "There's a new garage now. Best mechanic in town."

I asked him what it was called, how I would know it. "You'll know it," is all he would say.

_Randle Auto Repairs._

Ha fucking ha.

But there's no way in hell I'm turning around now. Likely I'd end up pushing her most of the way.

"In here!" is the only response I get, when I cut the engine and call out hello.

I go inside the workshop. It's pretty well laid out; not everything is new, but the workbenches are clear of clutter and the tools are all on boards around the bays, or in the tool chests lined up. Bizarrely, in one corner there's a notice board covered in kids' drawings.

There's a body tucked into the engine of a sweet little Dodge Coronet. An elbow jerks back with an accompanying, "_Shit!"_

"That's three!" comes a gleeful little voice from inside the car.

The mechanic stands up, rubbing his knuckles. He's cussing completely silently now – with a resentful glance at whoever is hidden behind the hood - as he turns around, but I can lip read the letter F perfectly well.

"Looking to borrow some tools," I say, real casual.

Steve Randle blinks at me. I guess nobody's keeping the Dixie Peach people in business these days. "_Tim?_ Tim Shepard? Is that you? Holy shit."

"That's four!"

Randle grits his teeth for a second. "_Alright_, Jay." He wipes his hand on his coveralls, holding it out. "How you been, Shepard?"

I shake his hand. "Yeah, good. This is your place, huh?" Stupid, but I feel like I need to play nice, make adult conversation. Christ. "Curly pointed me in this direction. Like I said, I could use the lend of some tools."

"For what?" He follows me as I gesture, then head outside. I see the door on the Dodge open and a little pair of legs slide out. The kid scurries up behind Randle.

Randle runs a hand over the Chief's handlebars. "Man, she's a beauty."

"Is this your motorcycle?" the kid pipes up. He stares up at me, dark hair flopping across his forehead. Like someone shrunk Steve Randle for a joke. He even has the oil stained jeans and t shirt.

I nod.

"I don't really –"

"Is it fast?" the kid interrupts. Randle clips him – gently – around the back of the head, with a resigned:

"Don't interrupt." Then he continues talking to me, "I don't really handle 'cycles, I had a kid working here was real good with 'em, but he quit last week."

"I can do the work. I just don't got the tools."

I can hear the kid sounding out the word 'In-d-i-an' as he traces the letters with his fingers. Randle is looking at the front forks.

"What model is this? '51?"

" '50. One of the first with those."

He whistles. "Sweet. Someone took their time reconditioning her." Someone did. Then a thousand, thousand miles later, someone handed me the key and walked away from everything.

That's when I came home. I had nowhere else to go at that point.

The kid is bouncing on his toes, tugging at Randle's hand. "Dad, Dad," he says. "_Dad_!"

Randle looks down.

"_Now_ can I ask him? Is it fast? Is it?"

"It is." I put him out of his misery. "Or at least it was. That's why I need to borrow your dad's tools. Fix her up a little."

"Well, you can't touch Daddy's special tools. Ain't nobody can touch those, can they?" The kid looks for confirmation.

Randle nods, but hides a smile. I figure the _kid_ ain't allowed to touch the 'special' tools. "C'mon," he says to me. "There's space inside. You wanna work on her here?"

I push the Indian inside, over to where he says. Everywhere is painted white, the floor is swept clear. He runs a clean workshop, Steve Randle.

I'm looking over the nearest workbench, seeing what's kept where, when I realize the kid is hovering by my elbow.

"I'm nearly six," he tells me proudly. "I'mma be six in...nine days." He had to work it out.

"Uh. Great." I don't know what to say.

"I 'spect six is big enough to go on a motorcycle." He looks real hopeful. "I am nearly six."

I realize what he is angling for. "Here," I say, lifting him up on the seat. He whoops and makes engine noises, stretching to reach the bars.

Randle looks over and rolls his eyes. "Jay! Stop bothering Tim and get over here." The kid sighs dramatically and slides down. He looks back at me.

"Will it take a long time to fix your motorcycle?" he asks. I shrug and he carries right on: "Do you cuss a lot when you fix it? Like five or ten times?"

I never had a lot to do with kids, but this one seems weird to me. "I never counted," I tell him.

"That's okay. I can do the counting." He beetles over to Randle. "What time is Mommy coming? Soon?"

Randle looks at the clock on the wall. He nods and opens the biggest tool cabinet. I'm caught by surprise as he gets out a jar half full of jelly beans.

"Only four," the kid says with a sigh, as Randle counts out the candies. "You were good today, Dad."

And when 'Mommy' turns up, the place sounds like a freaking day care center, within seconds. I have to look hard to count how many kids are suddenly swarming around the workshop entrance, every one of 'em making a noise of some kind.

It don't freak me out, the way it used to when we first got back. The sound of kids yelling don't have to be a bad thing. I know that. I know it.

"Hold it!" Randle shouts, although not in a real mean way. The noise dies away. He points at the floor. "What do we know about the line?" There is a real, painted red line across the entrance of the place, I never noticed that on my way in. One of the kids takes a step back and they are all huddled together on the other side of the line.

"Nobody over the line unless they are five years old!" the older kid crows - he who is nearly six, dancing on this side of the workshop. Steve gives him a raised eyebrow and the kid adds, reluctantly, "Unless Daddy says so."

"And I don't say so, not today. I'm busy."

"Join the club!" 'Mommy' objects and I surprise myself with how familiar her voice sounds. I climb to my feet and move forward. No sense prolonging the inevitable.

"I made you a car, Daddy." One of the tiny boys holds out a slightly crumpled sheet of paper, with blobs of color on it. Randle smiles.

"That's great, honey. I'll put it up right away." He sees me hovering and says to Evie, with a jerk of his thumb towards me, "Hey, babe, look what the wind blew in."

"Tim? Wow." Evie stares. "How are you?"

"He has a motorcycle," is offered up from somewhere near my leg, before I can answer.

"I do," I agree. She smiles.

"And he hardly says any cusses at all."

Randle closes his eyes briefly. Then he says, real calm, "I think Jay's about ready to go home now."

Evie nods. "Swap you. Your pick."

He shakes his head. "Babe. I gotta work, c'mon..." But she's only teasing, tells the kid to fetch his stuff.

"These all yours?" I hear myself ask, as the little bodies weave in and out around her.

"Nah. This one and this one." She points to the boys. I can see the smaller one looks like her a bit, same eye color. The other one's a littler Randle again. "And Jay, of course. But you met him, when he was a baby." Fuck me, I did. I'd forgotten that. I look the kid over again, thinking about it.

Evie smiles. "This is my niece, Toni." She gestures at the taller little girl, who is scuffing her shoe on the wall impatiently. "And this is Two-Bit's daughter." The little girl with strawberry blonde pigtails regards me steadily with gray eyes. _Two-Bit Mathews has a kid. I fell into the fucking Twilight Zone._ "I'm minding her while we're waiting on a new brother or sister arriving, huh, Kimmy?"

The kid nods. "Sister," she lisps in a firm tone.

"Maybe we'll find out when we get home," Evie says, then switches back to me. "I was tryin' to wear 'em out at the playground. Don't seem to have worked." The two little boys are shoving each other. She separates them without breaking the conversation. "Are you back for good?"

I shrug. "I dunno." I don't.

"Well, it's good to see you." She grabs the smallest kids' hands and tells Jay to 'walk with Kimberley and Toni'. I hear him complaining,

"Aw, Mom!" as they walk away.

Randle holds up his hand as I turn back into the workshop, with a grin.

"Don't even," he says wearily. "I don't know how it happened and I don't know how I'm still sane."

Part of me thinks that maybe he has found the right kind of insanity. Instead I make a crack about him not knowing how it happens and offer to explain the birds and bees to him. He snorts.

He looks over the way I have the parts laid out, where I've stripped the engine back, without comment, before he goes back to the Coronet.

There's a rhythm in cleaning up an engine, something I learned to hear clearly, working alongside Janssen. _More than the sum of the parts_. That's what he used to say. A fine tuned engine was more than the sum of its parts; it absorbed some soul from whoever worked on it, coaxing it into life.

This was his machine and I want to hear the rhythm, the way that I still hear his voice sometimes.

I genuinely don't know how long I've been sitting there working, when I finally hear Randle talking.

"You need her tonight?" he's asking. I shake my head. He jerks his own in response, indicating I should follow him out back. "Leave it then, no sense rushing, if you don't haveta."

It's starting to get dark outside. Randle opens an icebox on the back wall and tosses me a beer. He has a couple of old bench seats out here, tucked into the outside corner of the building and he drops into one, tipping back his bottle.

I crack mine on the wall and slide down.

"I'll be open by eight, but you come by whenever."

I nod agreement.

"You been travelling all this time?" His question is just a variation on everyone else's, but before I can come up with any of my answers, he starts talking tires and mileages and I realize he's asking about the motorcycle, not my personal life.

I don't need to tell him anything. We was never exactly friends. We knew each other but I knew a lot of people. But it feels wrong to let him believe that the miles I'm talking about were covered in the way he assumes. Wrong for Janssen's sake, not mine.

"I had a Hummer, most of the time," I tell him, "the Chief was a buddy's."

"You got the Harley here too, then?" His interest is up. I shake my head. Try for a joke:

"Even I can only ride one at a time, man." Then a portion of the truth. "Sold the Hummer, the Indian was a better ride." And he gifted it to me. Put the key in my hand. I keep that part for myself.

"Your friend don't need it no more?" he asks quietly. Either everyone has heightened perception, or I'm bleeding emotion through my pores.

I sip the beer.

"You get R&R at Vung Tau?" Randle asks me, out the blue. He pushes up his t shirt sleeve to better display the band of ink around the top of his own arm. The pattern is very similar, I admit. Mine goes on, of course, down and around and back again, bumping into the dragon that roars its way up my forearm. Not breathing fire. I liked the dragon, is all. Don't need no reminders of flames. The pattern he's talking about was first though.

I shrug. "Who remembers all the fuckin' stupid names?"

_Na Trang. _Davis. Mortar.

_Long Bihn. _Clark. Sniper.

_Chu Chi. _Greenbaum, grenade at close range. Harris. Cole. Alderman...

_Cheyenne, Colorado._ Janssen. Eighteen wheeler.

"Tim?" I get the feeling that wasn't the first time he spoke my name. "You want a ride home?" He changes what he was going to add: "I gotta get back or Evie'll skin me. But, later, after the kids are wrangled...you wanna get a drink, or something?"

I tell him no thanks. I don't mind walking. I'll see him in the morning.

I figure he'll try again, with the 'casual drink'. He saw it in me, when I zoned out. People have seen it before, mostly guys who were over there. They think they can help, they think comparing experiences will help. They think talking about it gets it out your head and...where? Where does it go then?

And when your head is filled with only this, if you get it out, what's left?


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N: Period correct, casual racism alert. Tim. Not me. **

* * *

><p>It takes me longer than I thought it would, to walk from Randle's garage to the bar. I'm late to meet Curly. I figure he won't mind, he said he had something to do first anyway.<p>

Friday night, after seven, the place is rammed. Way more people than there were last night. Way more people than I like to be around. I catch one or two glances shooting my way - but then, as I was walking I thought I saw a couple of heads turn in passing cars, faces shocked or curious, or not-quite-believing what they just saw. Like they saw a memory.

Or a ghost. I know how that feels.

I guess there are still people in this town who think they know who I am. Fuck 'em. They didn't know me then and they sure as hell don't know me now. I make an effort to unclench my fists.

I don't see anyone I recognize.

Curly filled me in on a few names last night. Frankie's inside; armed robbery. Spaghetti moved out east with his wife. His wife! And Sammy rolled his car on the expressway and bought the farm. That was hard to hear.

I can see the shape of Curly up at the bar. Looks like he's arguing with the bartender; he's waving his arms around, like he's explaining something.

As I make my way over, the barmaid sees me. The way she freezes makes Curly look around. He turns back to her, kind of guilty, losing the arm waving, and I figure he was telling her about me.

Trish shakes her head slightly and flashes him a smile. I lip read her telling him, 'It's okay' and by the time I get there, she looks perfectly calm. Sounds it too:

"Hey, Tim, long time, no see. What can I get ya?"

I ask for a beer, ignoring Curly, who is suggesting that we go somewhere else.

There's another chick tending the other end of the bar, both of them in T shirts plastered with the name of the bar. She ain't wearing a bra, neither. I wonder if it's part of their uniform. Friday night special.

I tell Curly I'm sorry to be late, I got caught up at Randle's. "You coulda told me it was his place," I add, over the top of my glass.

"Thought you might've figured it out. He always was the best with an engine." Curly's kidding, only yanking my chain. He has no way of knowing that I would never have assumed Randle was even still alive, never mind back home. He may have forgotten Randle was over there, if he ever paid attention to the fact in the first place.

"So, he fix you up?" I realize Curly is still talking, still checking on whether I'm mobile again. Whether I can leave.

I nod. "Left the Indian there. I'll finish her tomorrow."

Curly chews his lip, not asking what he wants to.

"You got any other surprises for me?" I glance at Trish who is laughing with a guy as he orders a refill.

"I'm sorry, man. I said we oughta meet somewhere else. She works weekends here."

I tell him it don't matter. He never could tell when I was lying to him, when he was a kid. He's on the level, though. This ain't like surprising me and Dom, or teasing me about Randle, he genuinely didn't intend me to run into Trish tonight.

I wonder why he didn't want me to see her. Why he even knew there was anything between her and me, back in the day. Ain't like I made a big deal of it, of her.

I remember her coming around, after Dallas checked out. Funny it's that. I can call to mind plenty of other stuff too, she was a good lay, we had some times. But I remember that most. She came around the house, stayed with me. She always knew when to be quiet. I ain't thought about Dally in years, must be being back here. I guess he oughta been top of the list all this time.

_Corner of North St. Louis._ Winston. Cops' bullets...

"...or take out. You want Chinese food?...Tim?"

I realize Curly was talking. Food. Yeah, whatever, I tell him he can choose, I don't care. I follow him out into the street without looking around.

"You okay?" He watches me light up. I shake out the match.

"Crowds. Ain't my thing." It's as true as anything I could say. I blow smoke sideways and challenge that I thought he was hungry, so why are we waiting? He shrugs and we take his car down to The Golden Lotus.

I tell Curly I'll wait in the car. I can see a kid at the entrance to the alley, just up from the Chinese restaurant. Different kid of course, but the turf has always been what it is.

I wait in the car. Until Curly goes inside.

The kid is packing and he don't care that I can see. I just don't care, which seems to freak him out more than if I made something of it. But he is in business and we take care of a transaction and I get back to the car before Curly.

As he drives away, having handed me the bag of food to hold, Curly keeps his eyes on the road and he says, real casual, "You can't use in the apartment."

"Ain't nothin' heavy. Just a little MJ," I tell him. And it is. The kid had plenty of choice, he was like a fucking department store of illegal substances, but I wasn't in the mood for blow or reds, and speed was always more Janssen's bag, not mine. And for the rest, I followed him a long way, but I left the needles in the jungle.

Curly shrugs, but his face is closed off. I have a sudden thought, maybe this is like the beer in his fridge, only worse for him. Maybe this is where temptation wins for him.

"Is it...are you...is it like the booze?" I try to articulate what I know. Addictions come tangled like snakes in a hole; when you get bit, sometimes it's one, sometimes it's another.

"Nah. I ain't never been that into it. It's Dom's PO, can't have him smelling pot around the apartment. We only got dispensation for him to live with me 'cause I'm family, else they'd've pulled the 'no associating' shit and made him go live in some half way house."

Dom's PO. Right.

It makes no sense, because when I scored it, I wasn't jonesing, it was a pure opportunity purchase, but as soon as Curly says I can't have a toke, I want one. I need one. It weighs my pocket down all the while we eat, I can smell it, taste it already.

I find myself trying to remember the last time someone told me 'no'. About anything. Most of the time, at crossroads, we'd flip a coin, but if one of us wanted to go north, or south, or wherever, the other didn't argue. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered.

No one has told me what _not_ to do in so long, I can't remember how to react.

We eat and I pretend to listen as he bitches about his boss and some bonus that the guy stiffed them on. I wonder how many jobs Curly has had, if he's expecting anything different. Seems to me that's how the profits get made.

Janssen and I picked up work when we needed dough, construction or farm work, mostly, anything that paid cash by the day. Although the field work was hard to come by if you were up against the wetbacks, they'll work for fucking pennies. It was always crappy wages, we had to skim a little here and there, 'extra' produce or maybe tools that we could sell on. We was always careful, though. Or maybe just lucky. I was telling Curly the truth when I said I ain't been inside since we got back.

Of course, that's one benefit of never staying anywhere long enough to get noticed.

When he switches on the TV, I say that I'm going for a walk. He tells me where he hides the key, for when I get back and I pretend like I didn't already notice.

On the sidewalk I have a moment of indecision. I still know my way around – hell, didn't I just prove I could navigate by the dealers' corners, if I needed – but I'm too old to be blazing up in the park, or down below the overpass with the high school dopeheads.

Fuck Curly and his new morality. Or rather, fuck Dom's PO and his surprise visits, that ain't down to Curly, if I'm being fair.

Christ, I oughta be fair. I walked away from these people, from _family,_ and they took me back like it was nothing. Like they'd always kept a place for me.

_I told ya, Shep, you got roots. _I hear him.

Ma bawled. Guess I expected that. Angel doing it, that was freaky. But she had the kid with her, all three months of it or however old it is – they told me, I know, but I wasn't really taking much in, apart from the fact that the house smelled the fucking same – and I hear that having a kid makes a chick fall apart some.

My feet have made the decision for me. I'm walking, even if I don't have a destination in mind. Where would a twenty five year old man go to get high on his own?

Apparently, the answer is a parking lot.

I can see a couple of cars that are either unlocked or at least not locked enough, but it's warm still and besides, I get a better view from the hood of an Impala parked up against the far wall. I ignore the way my hand shakes as I roll the joint and it stops soon enough.

Not that the kid was making any great claims, but the shit is fair to good. I almost smile at the memory of the way Janssen would grade his gear. Don't think he ever found any better than the half pound we scored off a little old lady in a ceramic store, in Albuquerque. He always did have a hankering to head back down there.

At least he said he did. Maybe he didn't mean it, any more than he meant anything else. Maybe he lied every time he opened his mouth. Maybe the only truth he ever told was when he put the key to the Indian in my hand and walked away from me without a word.

Maybe nobody ever tells the truth.

Maybe I don't.

It takes a long time for the bars to close.

As the lot empties, I watch the people returning to their cars, watch the lies they carry with them, drifting like smoke over their heads. I can see them clearly, can see which chicks don't mean it when they tell the guy they're with that they love him. Which guys are heading home to conceal how much they had to drink or how much they spent on drinks for some broad in some bar, who wasn't their wife but might have been somebody else's.

They don't know that I can see the lies. Especially the biggest one, the one they all carry.

Because they all, every single one of them, think they know the truth about over there, because they seen it on TV, they heard the speeches, they watched the news reports and the demonstrations, and that means they must know the truth. And every single one of them is wrong because nobody who wasn't there knows a fucking thing about it.

I can see these people's lies but they can't see mine. I ain't even sure they can see me. I might be invisible. I might not even be here.

Eventually there are only three cars left. The owner of the Impala didn't come back yet.

The lights go off in the bar across the street.

Three people call goodnight to whoever is left inside and they approach the cars.

One of the chicks shrieks a little when I move, clutching her heart like I appeared from nowhere, like I just became visible again. The other one doesn't flinch. The guy with them snaps his chin up, but Trish tells them she knows me and the chick who shrieked acts like it's some huge relief.

"Jeez, I thought you was about to mug us," she says with a giggle. The guy is opening the door on a dark sedan and the chick climbs in the passenger seat.

"What're you doing here, Tim?" Trish waits until they're gone to ask. Her hair is longer. And different. All chicks wear their hair different now.

"Maybe I ain't here."

"An' maybe I ain't dog-tired and my feet ain't killin' me, but the chances are slim to fucking zero, so if you got something to say to me, make it quick."

I indicate the hood under me. "I was just sittin'."

She cocks an eyebrow. "Is that right?"

"But if I was just sitting and you just happened along, maybe it was meant to be?"

"_Meant to be?_ You turn into some kind of fucking hippie?" Trish turns and walks over to the other car that's left, a rusty old Chrysler 300E, unlocking the door and looking over the roof at me. "This is my car, flower child. You want a lift, or not?"

She parked near a street lamp and it feels very bright inside her car.

Her hand is on the ignition but she looks at me. Studies me. I don't blink, I don't look away. I no longer feel invisible. I feel transparent.

Trish cusses under her breath, then starts the engine and pulls onto the street.

I check my hand, turn it over carefully, in case I am transparent. I tell Trish we should get a drink, I want a drink.

"I finished for the night. The bar closed."

"We could find another one."

"Do me a favor, Tim? Tomorrow, you do that. You find another bar, huh?"

I can't work out her tone, because there is no tone. She don't sound pissed at me, or sad or...nothing.

She stops the car outside the apartment block and gestures for me to get out. I have my hand on the door handle when she says, "Tim?"

I wait for the question. Try to predict if it will be, _where were you?_ Or _why'd you stay away so long? _Get one of my answers ready.

"Tim, why'd you come back?"

I get out the car and walk up the steps and it's only when I'm inside that I realize I never told her where Curly lived and she never asked.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Um, kind of posting Dom's story. Calling it 'Home is the place.' Because all your lovely comments made me think, yeah, what was it like for him when he got out..? So, you only have yourselves to blame! :)**


	5. Chapter 5

"Fucking hell, Tim!"

I wake up to Curly's righteous indignation. He snatches up the cereal packet from down beside the pull out, shakes it to demonstrate that it's empty, crushes it for good measure and throws it at me.

"I got to go to work, man. No fucking breakfast? Thanks a bunch. An' I told you not to smoke up in here."

"I didn't."

My protest is dismissed with a curled lip, as he scoops up my T shirt from the floor and sniffs it, before throwing that at me too. "Fucking hell, Tim, you might as well have done." He jabs an elbow in the corner of the window I couldn't open and levers it wide. Obviously there's a knack.

I'm still blinking, still waking up, despite what must rank as one of the best night's sleep I've had in years. I don't remember falling asleep, don't remember dreaming, don't remember Dom coming in. I look around. I assume Dom came in.

Curly exits the apartment, his parting words coming back over his shoulder. "Buy some fucking cereal."

I stand up slowly, the latter part of last night coming back to me. I brush the crumbs off the mattress, find more, plus sticky bits of marshmallow, on my chest. Guess I do owe him some..._Count Chocula_. Jesus Christ.

Dom is asleep on the bed, but I chance going past him because my bladder is on the point of exploding. He don't seem to have moved when I come out the bathroom, having dunked my head under the faucet to wake myself up fully.

There's no milk either, although I don't remember drinking that. I make black coffee.

I shower and I take the T shirt in with me, rinsing it through with Curly's soap after I use it on myself. _Ain't you glad I use Dial, Curl?_ Shit, but I didn't intend to piss him off. I guess I should have known it wouldn't take long to screw things up. I wring out the shirt and drape it over the open bathroom windowsill.

This time I have woken Dom, but he just grunts at me, then pulls a pillow over his head as I make for the door.

At the garage, Randle is already there, working. I can't stop myself checking that he didn't touch the Chief, didn't move anything I had laid out. He catches me doing it and holds up a hand.

"She's all yours."

I swallow, to give myself a second to come up with the appropriate response. I thank him, again, for letting me work here. He shrugs and ducks back to what he was doing.

"No kid today?" I look around warily.

"Nah. That was a punishment yesterday." That surprises me. The kid looked like he was having a good time, hanging out here. Randle sees what I'm thinking and snorts. "Not for Jay. For me." He shakes his head. "Evie thinks it makes me watch my mouth, having him around."

Now I snort. "Guessin' she don't know about the candy extortion racket he's got going then?"

"Right. You got kids?"

"Not as far as I know." Flippant. Almost like I'm a normal person, used to normal conversations. He twists his lip in that half smile he does.

"Lucky escape. It's a hell of a thing." And right there is where I see he's lying. Playing it cool. Acting like his family is a burden and his life is a drag. The truth is, this man would give up his own life for his children. It radiates off him and he don't even know it.

I pick up a perfectly clean retainer bolt and start wiping it with a new rag. Gradually I fall into the rhythm and the machine starts to breathe again.

_Of course she does. She has a soul. All beautiful things have a soul, don't let anyone tell ya otherwise. _Whatever, man. Just because you have a hard on for a motorcycle. _Aw, Shep,_ y_ou just didn't find the right one yet_. It was always tough to rile Janssen.

When I finally sit back, I realize Randle ain't around and neither is the Ford he was working on. Even if I got the model wrong, I know it wasn't a convertible – which means he drove one car out and another one in, without me noticing. I look around for the clock and find it went past midday.

I walk out front, stretching my back some, in time to see him climb out the passenger seat of a pickup.

"You get done?" he asks, strolling past me. I'm so surprised at his lack of concern that I turn with him to answer:

"Well, I didn't take her out yet, but I think, yeah."

"Hey, Shepard. Steve said you were back." I spin back around. I hadn't even paid attention to the driver, who is now holding out his hand for me to shake. He ain't got any smaller. I notice he's wearing a wedding ring. Darry Curtis grins at me. "How you doing?"

I make all the right noises. I'm mostly trying to think whether the last time I saw him to talk to was the night Dallas Winston died. Not our first rumble together, but certainly my last and it ain't like we hung out to shoot pool or nothing. I think about how long ago it was that he once took up for me against some kids from school.

"...and Ponyboy just graduated." He's been catching me up on his brothers, I guess.

I blink. "The little one?"

He laughs out loud at that. "Yeah. The little one. The college graduate."

"Yeah, yeah, he's a freakin' genius. It's been covered." Randle rolls his eyes as he comes back. "You gonna let us see the Indian in action, or what?"

"By which he means _he_ wants to ride it." Curtis smirks.

"Hey. Free use of the workshop. And the tools."

They are easy with each other in a way that makes me suddenly lonely. I ask Randle if he can ride a motorcycle. He fixes me with a level stare.

"Ex-fucking-cuse me?"

"Okay," I admit defeat. He has a point about the free use of his stuff. "But lemme try her first." It crosses my mind I could just take off. Not come back. I don't. I circle the block. She feels smooth, I know I did everything right. The way I was taught.

Randle guns it, like the freaking drag racer he used to be. I wince. Janssen rode the Indian hard for sure, but he respected it. I turn around to wait for Randle to reappear down the street.

I have to watch the street, I realize, because I _cannot_ just hear that engine coming down towards me. I have to be able to see that it is _not _Janssen, to convince my brain that he ain't coming back. It don't happen when I'm riding, the sound is different then, but if I hear it like he was coming back from a supply run or something...

It ain't Janssen. It ain't. It ain't...

"Very sweet. You got a sweet machine here." Randle grins and suggests that Curtis has a turn.

Curtis shakes his head with a smile. "Man, I ain't been on a motorcycle since high school." But it's a token protest and he gestures for Randle to give up his seat. I make some kind of objection, I didn't just tune that sweet machine to see it slide across the asphalt. But Randle waves my worry away and Curtis plays with the gas a little, then takes off, nice and smooth.

Randle rolls his eyes. "Fuckin' Superman," he mutters, which makes no sense. He pulls a wry face at me. "Of course he can ride a fucking 'cycle. He could probably fly a fucking Apollo rocket, if he put his mind to it."

"Where'd you go before?" I hear myself ask. "How come you came back with him?"

Steve Randle squints at me, answers kind of slow, "I hadda drop the Ford off, up at the place Darry works, belongs to a guy he knows there. Darry had a half day, gave me a ride back."

I shrug. "Whatever. I was just surprised you left me, with the workshop open an' all."

"Shepard...I told you where I was going, how long I'd be. You answered me."

"Yeah," I bluff. "I just meant, I coulda cleaned you out, huh?"

He looks at me, steady. "Well, I guess you coulda at that." He's trying to make light of it but his tone is off. He knows I don't remember him talking to me before.

Then my head whips around, away from Randle, and my throat constricts for one awful second.

I forgot to watch the street.

I heard the Indian coming back and my fucking head went somewhere else. I was literally just reminding myself that he's gone and my fucking brain still went fucking soft on me.

And now I know that Randle is looking at me like I'm a lousy mental case. Like I just got spooked by my own goddamn motorcycle. I walk away, inside the workshop, forcing myself to breathe steady. I start to pick up the stuff I used, put the tools away.

I hear a door. I hear an engine. I hear Randle come into the garage.

"Darry hadda split. He said to say thanks, he's going home, tell his wife he wants a motorcycle." Randle has the key to the Indian in his hand, but that ain't happening, I ain't having him hand it across, I won't take it like that. He hesitates and puts it down on the counter near me. "He won't tell her that. She's expecting. He ain't gonna freak her out none."

I pick up the key.

"What happened to your buddy?" He keeps his voice quiet. "How come he gave you the Indian?"

A scrap of what he said yesterday comes back to me and I parrot it: "He don't need it no more."

"You serve together? In Vietnam?"

I nod.

"Is he dead?"

I look around the floor of the bay I was working in, check it's all clean. "I think I'm done, man. Thanks again."

Randle scribbles on a scrap of paper. "I know you don't wanna hear this. But, any time you wanna talk, or maybe listen. These guys I know, we got this...thing. This group. Ain't regular or nothin'. No pressure. Just guys who get it, who were there." He shrugs, embarrassed now, holding out the paper. "I put a couple of numbers. In case you don't wanna talk to me. Whatever..."

I need to be out of here. I need to see a horizon in front of me. Need somewhere to be that isn't here. I summon up enough spit to speak to him. "Were you there when Winston went down?"

He reacts like I clocked him. "_What_?"

"We got that in common too, don't we? We knew Winston. Did you see him hit the deck? Did you see the cops take him down?"

Randle takes a step back.

"What? You don't think it would help, to _share_?"

I used to do this with my fists. With a switchblade. With an M16, most of all.

I hurt people different, nowadays. But it's what I do best.

I leave him standing there and I ride away. The Indian is smooth. She welcomes me back, soothes me, lets me get to a place where I don't have to think. At all.


	6. Chapter 6

**A/N: All the support, in a busy time, appreciated! :)**

* * *

><p>Thing is, as far as the Indian takes me, there's still something pulling me back.<p>

I couldn't have said what number the house was. Don't matter though, because the layout of this neighborhood is apparently tattooed on my brain and I find my way there like it was seven days and not seven years since the last time I was here.

I don't know for sure that she still lives there of course.

But I can see that the Chrysler is parked on the driveway.

It's late. Real late. But I know what time she finished yesterday and I don't think she'll be asleep. I let the Indian idle next to her car, while I look at the light that's on inside the house.

Only she ain't inside the house.

Trish stands up, leaves her porch chair and holds onto the post by the steps. She's skinnier than she used to be, I think.

"Well, lookit, who knew Peter fucking Fonda would come a calling." Her voice is hard. I remember when she used to wait out on this porch for me. When coming here was a safety net.

I walk up to the house. "Yesterday...I never said what I meant to say."

"I swear to God, Tim Shepard, if you say _you're sorry_, I will fucking kill you." She brandishes the vodka bottle in her hand.

"I am."

"Which bit you sorry for? The leaving without a word, or the coming back alive without a word? The staying away, for fucking years, also _without a word..."_

"Yup."

"You bastard." She curls her lip at me and takes a swig of the booze.

I feel like I'm walking along a cliff. The words I need are just out of reach and if I grab too quick, I could knock them right over the edge, lose them forever. Fuck's sake, I ain't trying to be flippant, I _am sorry_ for all of those things she accused me of, and more.

"You need to fuck off before my boyfriend comes out and kicks your head in." She jerks her thumb at the door behind her, but my eyes have already gone there. When I look back at her, Trish is laughing. It ain't a happy sound. "You look surprised. Holy God, Shepard, you _look surprised_. You actually think I've been waiting here, all this time, for you."

"No. It ain't that..." I climb the steps. She sways back, away from me, waving the bottle around.

"I'm lying. Obviously." Her tone is laced with acid. "No other man could ever satisfy me, after I had the privilege of being Tim Shepard's regular lay." She snorts inelegantly and opens the screen door, waving me inside. "C'mon. Come see my poor little lonely existence."

I hesitate and she looks back at me from the entryway, her face softening some, the tension in her shoulders dropping a little.

"Sorry. I mean it, come in. It's just me. My mom died a coupla years ago. An' Frannie got married."

"The nun?"

"Yeah." Trish smiles, genuinely, for the first time. "That lasted 'til the first time she got asked to a dance."

I'm in now. I look around the front room. Never spent too much time in here, it was usually all going on in Trish's room when I was here before.

There's a photo on the mantle, of her brother in uniform. The one I didn't know. The one who didn't make it. She told me once that the Army said it was a sniper, said it was quick. I know now that ain't always true, but they tell the families that, to make it easier on them.

It wasn't easy. She was shaken apart by it.

Like a ton of bricks, it hits me, what I did to her, never telling her I made it back.

But she had Mick, she still had him. He was inside for a long stretch but that was then... I ask how come he ain't living here now.

"Mickey? You think Mickey's home?" She laughs and again it sounds bitter. "Mickey ain't coming home this side of Kingdom come. He put some guy in a coma, in a fight, down there in McAlester. They threw away the fucking key." She tilts her head to one side, a challenge in her eyes. "Whatcha gonna do, Tim? Go see him for me?"

Shit. I did that. I visited Mick, to let her know he was okay. And to let him know I was watching out for her. Probably a good thing for me he didn't get out, I'd be explaining round about now how I went back on that. One more person in the long, long list of people I disappointed.

Trish is still glaring at me.

"Do you...want me to go see him?" I try the idea on for size.

Her eyes get very wide. She takes a shaky step towards me. Real close. I just start thinking that she's going to kiss me when she snaps and flings herself at me, fists flying and words pouring out of her:

"You? You arrogant bastard! Why would you think you got the right to do one fucking thing for me? You ain't nothin' to do with me, y'hear? You don't got the right to do nothin' for me!" It's all I can do to grab her as she flails at me, slapping and scratching and even when I get a hold of her hands, she kicks me. "You lousy, stinking bastard! You fucking ego-maniac! You disappeared for years, _fucking years_, don't you dare waltz back into town like you got the right to pick up where you left off. You left me! You left me..." There are tears pouring down her face. "_You left me_."

I don't know what to do except to kiss her then and she slams her face at me, crashing into my teeth, less like kissing, more like attacking me still, her hands twisting in my hair, pulling at my T shirt.

We barely make it to her room, to her bed.

She starts crying again, when we're done, but softly this time - while she strokes my side, my arm, avoiding the ink, tracing the scars, each and every one.

"Oh, Tim. What did they do to you?"

I hear her quiet voice from a long way away, as I look at the ceiling. I can feel her touching me and I let her and that, in itself, is something.

I think about the boom boom girls over there, the broads back here, paid for with cash or booze or a mouthful of lies in some crummy bar. Apart from the obvious, I never liked their hands on me, never on the scars. That's not to say some of them didn't get off on the 'wounded soldier' kick. Had one once who wanted to talk about pain, how much I'd been hurt, while we were doing it. That didn't end so well.

But not one of them cried for me.

I hold Trish's hand to still it. She lays her head on my chest and curls around me. She _is_ skinnier, my hands remember the curves of her more than my eyes did even.

She ain't crying no more. She says my name again, sleepy this time. "I missed you, Tim. So much."

I want to feel comfortable with this, with her. I want to feel like this was a good thing, like it should have happened, likes it means something.

Christ, let me feel something.


	7. Chapter 7

Trish sleeps a little. I don't. I can't allow myself to. I've seen the faces of chicks woken by one of my nightmares and I won't do that to her.

It's starting to get light when she wakes up. She has to have a hangover, she was fairly loaded last night. But her smile, when she opens her eyes and sees me, is pure.

She strokes my hair back from my face. "You never used to stay."

I didn't.

She says she will make coffee, get me something to eat.

I let her.

She must be right next to the phone in the kitchen, because it barely rings before she snatches it up.

I start to get dressed.

Whoever is on the other end of the phone is arguing, if not full blown yelling, because her every sentence is cut off before she can finish it. It's a jigsaw puzzle conversation:

"Yes, he's here...I know that...I'm sorry...I _am,_ don' t you tell me...No...Yes, but...You don't understand...I know...I know that..."

She could be talking to a girlfriend, someone who is telling her she's an idiot for falling into bed with me, after all this time. But the tone of her voice is telling me different. And whoever it is asked about me by name, or else Trish wouldn't have said 'he's here'.

I think about how angry she was, out on the porch last night, when she spat all those clues at me, about not waiting for me. Hell, she used the word 'boyfriend'.

I think about the fact that Curly didn't want me to run into her, down at the bar. About the fact that she took me home to him, without needing to ask where he lived.

And I ignore the way she sounded, also last night. _"I missed you, Tim. So much."_

She has to hear the Indian start up. But she doesn't come out.

xXXXx

Once again, the road soothes me and once again it takes me back.

I didn't expect anyone to be home, although it's Sunday, so I guess Curly oughta be around. It's Dom though, who looks up as I go into the apartment. I ask him where Curly is.

"Ria's. Sunday dinner, man. You were probably invited."

"You weren't?" That came out more harsh than I meant.

Dom shrugs. "Yeah. But I don't go often. Her an' me...it's complicated now."

Since_ I_ put it out in the open, that Ma is his ma. I guess addressing that fact didn't get done between them until he got out, assuming that she never went down to Big Mac to see him. So they're only six months or so into dealing with a truth that they both kept hidden for years.

I wonder if there is anything I touch that doesn't fall apart.

He watches me stuffing a few things in my duffle. I remember the t shirt I left in the bathroom and go find it. It's dry and folded on the edge of the tub.

"Are you done here, then?" It's hard to meet his steady gaze, harder to offer up an answer. "At least have a beer with me, before you go." He walks over to the icebox. When he don't come back, but walks to the front door, I'm puzzled, until he beckons me with a jerk of his head.

Down the corridor is a door that leads to stairs up to the roof. There's a line of laundry flapping in one corner, but no one else is up here. I look at the view of other buildings, other roofs. I wish Curly had told me this was up here, when I went out the other night to smoke. Wish I hadn't walked over to the bar. To Trish.

Dom hands me a beer and sits down against the low wall that runs around the edge of the roof.

I notice that he didn't try to stop me leaving. Didn't ask me to stay.

"Why'd you come back?" he asks. I'm instantly reminded that Trish asked me the same thing. I sit opposite him, leaning back on the door housing.

I think about when we were kids. When I trusted him above anyone else, because he was always there for me. He looked out for me, gave me skills that helped me survive, probably made me who I was.

I ain't that person no more.

I was twenty years old when I went over there. How long did it take for twenty years of who I was to be replaced with who I am now? How did I not notice that I was slipping away?

Dom hasn't said another word. He waits patiently. So maybe I ain't that same person no more, but maybe he still is. Maybe he can be, for me, one more time. Maybe this is what I came back for.

And so I tell him. I tell him everything.

I tell him that what we played at, with sticks and knives and fists and chains, even what happened with him and the guy he stuck when they fought over the wife, ain't nothing compared to what really happens when man wants to kill his fellow man.

I tell him that the human body can be ripped apart in more ways than he can ever imagine. That blood smells so different in quantity, that no fight, no rumble, could ever produce that overpowering fog of metal and fear and that once you've been covered in it, you don't ever get clean again.

That Janssen and I were the only ones on our patrol who made it out alive that last time. That we made a pact then, to stick together; more than friends, more than brothers. We were the ones who knew, the ones who carried the true knowledge deep inside. That we were never apart a day after that, over there or back home. We traveled the width of the country and then some. Always moving, because to stay still was to be caught, we learned that in the jungle. And we could never be caught, because we carried the truth and the truth has to be free.

And I tell Dom about the long nights, when one, or both of us, would relive the pain and the fear and the shame of being alive when so many others had that ripped away from them. Nights with booze, or drugs, or sometimes just cold nothing, to see us through to a morning that meant another road, another horizon, another step further away.

But always together.

I don't know how long I've been talking. I feel hoarse and my beer is gone. Dom hands me his bottle without a word.

I can't go on with the story. That's where it ends. He can see Janssen ain't with me now. He can see that what I just said, about us always being together, is no longer the case.

"Don't go." Dom finally speaks. "Don't take this away with you. Stay."

I want to. Oh, God, I realize that. I want to.

But I did something stupid here. Last night. I may have hurt my brother without even meaning to. I know I've hurt Trish. Again. I try to tell Dom about that too. About the fact that I denied loving her, even to myself, for so long that the lie became a habit, became a fact. And it's too late now to undo all of that. I tell him I want to:

"Thing is, I did the wrong thing by her, I know that. I was an arrogant prick back then and I never made it no better, not contacting her when I was first gone, never mind all this time." I take a breath. "And I think...I think maybe she got with Curly while I was gone and now I've screwed that for them too."

Dom's eyes – _my_ eyes, I still see that freaky carnival mirror, he is still _me with a twist_ – flicker. He closes them for a second. That's something that I do too, to give myself time to come up with a response. To give myself time to say exactly the right thing and no more.

And that's when I know what he's going to say.

"Not Curly," I say it for him. Because it was never Curly. Shit. Oh, shit.

"You gotta understand something. You'd been gone a long time, kid –"

"Don't call me that."

"...a long time. I don't think she...I mean, maybe a couple of guys, but no one she felt anything for. She was yours a long time, Tim. But not to wait forever, man. An' both of us missed you, an' we got to talking an'-"

"Shut up." I feel like a kid again. That's what kills me. I feel like I want to yell and scream and shove him, knowing he's older than me, he's bigger than me, he's...

He ain't bigger than me no more.

I don't even feel the first punch. My hand doesn't feel it. I could go on and on, and I wouldn't feel it. I am beyond feeling pain. I will never feel pain again.

The blood stops me.

Dom looks up at me, his mouth bleeding, as I realize he didn't fight back. Barely defended himself, just curled up. I'm frozen, my fist pulled back, leaning over him.

I jerk upright and stumble back across the roof. Make it to the door, wrench it open and fling myself through.

And I'm sitting on the first step.

And I'm not beyond pain after all, not in the slightest, but it ain't my fist, my knuckles, ain't even my scars, which itch and burn and keep me somewhere I don't want to be. I hurt deep inside, in a place that shouldn't exist, that hasn't existed for a long, long time, but which is now slowly tearing apart, piece by piece.

My heart is breaking.


	8. Chapter 8

_You're like a human desert, man. It ain't natural. _

Shut up.

_You know this ain't the gear talking, I'm right. A man who don't cry is a man who'll snap eventually._

Shut up.

_Shep. These hurts you carry around, the ones that fight to get out of you at night, maybe you'd be free of 'em, man, if you let yourself cry._

You free of 'em now, Janssen? Did the truck that crushed your body crush the hurts right out of you? You lousy coward. You lousy, fucking coward. You told me we'd see it through together, you _promised_. You were no nearer the answer than I was and you did not fucking find it in the kiss of a fucking eighteen wheeler. You left me.

I hear Trish's voice overlay my thoughts. _You left me_.

Oh, God.

Sitting next to me on this step, Dom's arms are around me and I ain't just bawling, I'm _sobbing_ into his shoulder. I have no memory of the last time I cried. But now I don't know how to stop.

_Davis, Clark, Greenbaum_, all of them, I'm crying for all of them. I'm crying for the memory of a tow headed, smirking face and strangled accent. For a frightened, abused, thirteen year old who needed more help than I could give him. For a beautiful, fierce, teenage girl who was afraid to say that she loved me and who had her world ripped out from under her with no explanation.

For Janssen. My buddy. My funny, clever, loyal, desperately flawed friend who had demons that predated whatever the jungle threw at him and who still gave me the gift of as much time as he could, while he held onto this world.

For myself. For the 'me' I lost somewhere, without noticing.

Eventually I'm done. I am completely empty. I am also horribly embarrassed and unable to move, because I've soaked Dom's shirt with my tears and snot. He already wiped the blood from his mouth on it. The blood from where I hit him.

I mutter, "Fuck," under my breath.

"I was going for '_shit_', but whatever," Dom says and the unexpected lightness makes me snort, which then makes me splutter as the last of my emotion gets out. I sit up, wiping my face with the back of my hand.

We sit for a spell in silence.

"Coulda been worse. I threw up on Curly, first night in the apartment," Dom says conversationally, inspecting his t shirt. "In my defense, I hadn't had a proper drink in ten years."

"An' you always was a lightweight."

He takes the snipe, although it's completely untrue. There is a moment more of silence. Then:

"I would never have gone near her, Tim, if I knew you was coming back."

I know he is telling me the truth. And not because I have some mystical ability to see people's lies. Because he is my brother and I can hear the pain in his voice. Because this is what I felt when I thought I'd done it to Curly, gone with his girl, behind his back. What I need to accept I've done to Dom.

I nearly lose it again, at that thought. Trish and him. Dom and her. _OhGodGodGod_...

He's waiting. Waiting for me to say something, to...forgive him.

But it ain't the same, I don't deserve the same consideration, because I ain't been here to deserve it. I clear my throat, tell him, "'S'okay. She said it, and you was right, before. I was away too long. She had no reason to wait for me."

"But she did it anyway. Aw, man, you got no idea."

I'm staring at my hands, because I can't look at him.

"Her an' me, it ain't no big thing. Tim?" Dom waits until I do meet his eye. "_It's okay_."

This time, I ain't sure. I look at him and I ain't fucking sure, if he's saying that for real or if he's telling me that because he's my big brother and he's looking out for me, one more time.

But, God help me, I decide to let him. I need someone else to hold me up, for a while.

xxXxx

Dom makes me coffee, after I take a long shower, and then he persuades me to walk to a bar and grill to get something to eat. Turns out to be the place Curly tried to get me to go to, down on Second. '_TJ's'_, although the neon's out on the 'J' on the side we approach.

I'm ashamed that Dom's lip is swollen and he has a bruise coming up on his cheek, but he seems buzzed to be out with me and he keeps talking about times we partied, back at the yard when we was kids.

This is the first time we ever legitimately bought a drink together.

Things changed in the time I was overseas. But he had a whole decade out of circulation. I ask if he found it weird, that on the day he got out he was suddenly legal to buy alcohol. Did all the changes freak him out?

Dom grins. "Are you kidding? I'm still tryin' to get my head around the fact that it costs me 35 cents for a pack of weeds."

We're finished eating – and I see why he and Curly like this place, the food was good, although I feel like maybe I ate too much – when some ginger dude explodes into the place, his arm around the shoulders of a tall, good looking, pansy type in one of those coats that drags on the ground.

The droopy ginger moustache makes its way around the tables, handing out cigars and accepting handshakes and slaps on the back, then stops in front of us with his groupie. I guess Dom knows them, since he says 'hey' to both of them. They look at me in surprise though. Ginger blinks at me, then grins:

"As I live and breathe, Shepard. I heard you was back." His hair never looked that red when it was greased, back in the day. "Congratulate me, I got a daughter!"

The pansy rolls his eyes. "You have _two_."

"I have one brand new one, smart ass, I'm talkin' about the new one, ain't I?" Two-Bit Mathews shoves the kid playfully, then comes off worse when the kid shoves back, because his balance is shot and the kid ain't exactly a runt no more.

I say, "Congratulations," quick, before they take the roughhousing any further. Mathews hands me and Dom a cigar each and grins widely.

"Callin' this one _Amanda_. Man, she's beautiful. Like her sister. I'm tellin' ya, I make freakin' beautiful children, man." He's swaying and Dom scoots up, to let him sit. Mathews beams at us.

"Can I sit down, Tim?" Since when did Little fucking Curtis grow the balls to even speak to me, never mind gesture that I oughta make room for him? I move up. "Is Curly around?" he asks, as he sits. Dom tells him no, but he might come by later. The kid smiles, reminds me of his brother when he does.

Mathews snorts, waving his hand at me and Dom. "Three of you together again, hell that's dangerous. The Three Musketeers. The Three Wise Men. Ha! 'You Shepards' as the Three Wise Men, that's –"

Neither Dom nor I point out that his name ain't actually Shepard. Maybe we both just like being lumped together.

"Jeez, Two-Bit," Curtis interrupts Mathews before he can ramble on, "didn't you use up all the 'three' names on us, years ago?"

"There's another one, for you then!" Mathews looks pleased at the kid's comment. "You Shepards can be like the Three Curtis Boys."

Curtis pulls a face but it strikes me as real funny. I hold it together as I give them a flat stare. "Makes sense to me," I agree. They all look at me curiously until I explain, "I'm in the middle, right? Makes me the pretty one then."

When they all burst into laughter, I let myself join in.

xxXxx

The Mathews circus is on its way out, when Curly arrives. They greet each other in the doorway. He lucked out on the cigars, they're all gone, but I watch as he nods along, makes some plan to catch up with Little Curtis in the week. He glances at the clock as he makes his way over to us and then, Curly takes one look at Dom's face and turns on me.

"_What the hell did you do?_"

How did that happen? How did Curly get to be the one who notices? The one who calls me out?

"Chill, man. It's all good." Dom tries to wave away the concern, but Curly won't let it drop, starts in on me about how Dom's PO will have a cow if he thinks Dom was in a fight and what right do I have to stuff everything up, until, "_Curly_." Dom shuts him up with just his name, quiet like.

Curly swallows. He sits next to Dom, across from me, as Dom explains,

"I ain't gotta see him 'til next week. This'll be gone by then." He licks his split lip, a wry expression on his face. "Me an' Tim are good, y'hear? Tim wants to work something out with Trish, so that's how it's gonna be." Memories flood through me. Boys listening up, boys nodding quickly. _Jump? Sure, Boss, how high?_ What Dom said was the law. That feels comfortable to me.

But Curly's face is awash with guilt. _He knew_. His eyes flick between us. Fuck, it was him on the phone to Trish, and he was telling her to stick by Dom.

I rub my face, trying to work out if I'm more tired than anything else. I feel slightly nauseous, have done since I bawled. And I know, just because Dom stepped back, don't mean that Trish will want me. That would be too easy. That would be more than I deserve. I don't trust life to give me what I _need_, never mind what I freaking want.

"Tim?"

I have no idea which one was talking to me, if I'm expected to answer up. I pretend like I need to get some air. As I walk away I can't help but hear Dom insisting to Curly,

"You gotta lighten up, man, it ain't his fault he couldn't come home, y'hear?"

Pacing the sidewalk don't help my stomach any and I duck into the alley next to the bar and puke up my dinner, then ignore my hand shaking as I dig in my pocket for my lighter. I feel like I was on a roller coaster, like I still am. Fuck, but I ain't gonna be able to put the genie back in the bottle, now that I told Dom almost everything. I light a second weed from the end of the first, ignoring that part of me begging for more than a nicotine rush.

"You okay?"

That. That look on Curly's face. That's what I ain't gonna be able to live with.

_Sneer at me, Curly. Spit on me. Call me a baby killer and a warmonger and a fucking brain-dead government stooge. Don't pity me. _

"Yeah, I'm okay."

"Sorry 'bout before, me getting pissed that you beat on Dom." Curly shrugs, kind of embarrassed. "It's just, y'know, he's still on parole an' all. I don't want 'em to have any excuse to send him back. He had a shit time."

I start to laugh. Laugh until it hurts. End up sliding down the wall into a squat, as the breath leaves me in hysterical convulsions and I drop my cigarette. _Dom_ had a shit time? Curly is worried about _Dom_, worried that he might have to go back to a bed with sheets, in a solid building, where he'll be fed three times a day and never have to sit up all night, in the rain, trying to keep a dying friend quiet by loading him with all the morphine in both your packs, until you ain't sure if it's the bullet wounds or the dope that stops his breathing...

"Are you high?" Curly demands in an angry whisper.

I shake my head and look up at him. And I see something raw in his eyes that shuts me up, that snaps off the urge to laugh and replaces it with a new jab to my newly discovered heart.

"You think I'mma make you lose Dom?"

He reacts defensively. "_No_. I'm just sayin', he done his time."

"Yeah. I get it." I stand up. "I get it."

"It's been cool, having him around." _Because you weren't._ I nod at Curly and he chews his lip, before blurting, "I'm sorry I didn't tell you 'bout him an' Trish. I wasn't sure if you...I mean, if you even..."

"I know. 'S' okay." Holy God, I ain't sure if I can cope with this constant apologising to each other. Who the hell are we? Curly lights up a weed but I wave away his offer. He shuffles some, reminding me of when he was a kid and he was nervous.

"Dom said you told him some stuff. About 'Nam. That it was pretty bad."

I shrug.

"You gonna tell me?"

I shake my head. "Wish I didn't tell him, to be honest." Of course, he asks me why and I close my eyes briefly, before giving him the truth. "Just easier to _not_ say. Like maybe it ain't true if I don't talk about it, I guess. That makes any kind of sense?"

"Who the fuck d'ya think you're talking to? " His anger is surprising, but contained, and he keeps his voice low. "I could get a fucking Oscar for _not talking_ about shit. You wanna know where it got me?" Curly shoves his jacket sleeve up, letting his scar be the answer.

The ice cold, jagged edge of that idea slices down my insides, that Curly's name could've been on the list. I could have got back to find he was... – I try to tell him:

"Don't never...I mean... You leave people behind, if'n you do that. You can't..."

"No shit? You wanna stop and think about that a moment, bro? Leaving people behind?" The light from the broken sign makes it look like Curly's eyes are shining, for a second.

"My buddy offed himself. My buddy from the Army." It's like the words have nothing to do with me. Like I'm hearing someone else say them. "Not when we was over there. When we was here. Coupla months ago. He just... Look, it messed with my head, man. You woulda left Ma an' Angel with that." _And me. Me._ "I don't...I can't...it ain't..._Don't_..."

"I ain't gonna." Curly throws his weed butt aside and makes like he's going to reach out and touch me, but he don't finish the move. "I promise, Tim, that was different. I ain't going there again. Alls I'm trying to say is, I needed to talk to someone. Not keep everything in my head, y'dig?" He sounds calm again, but my brain is still spinning. "So, maybe, y'know, if you talk to us, it will help."

No, I don't think so. 'Cause I don't think that even the details of what happened to him in the reformatory would make it different for me. I already think that it was shit. Hate that it happened. But I can't ever _know_ what it was like for him. And he will never understand what it was like for me, over _there_, no more than Dom can, which is why I regret laying it on him. But I'm too tired to get into that. I may never be able to explain that properly to either of them. So I let Curly shove me back towards the front of the building and we go back inside and let Dom see that we ain't killed each other in the alley.

And this is the first time the three of us bought a drink together, even if I join Curly in a Coke because my head is pounding like a fucking jackhammer and even I know alcohol will only make that worse.

Curly's constant glancing at the clock becomes clear when the next shift turns up and the new waitress is mighty cute and mighty stacked. He goes over to the counter and she greets him with a kiss and a shimmy against him that makes it obvious they're more than acquaintances. He perches on a stool as she straightens the counter and stacks some glasses.

I raise my eyebrows at Dom and he grins.

"That's _Carol Ann_. Curl'll try to tell ya it ain't nothin'. It's something."

I watch the way Curly's eyes follow her as she moves around the place. I agree with Dom, it's something. If that's a part of why he's doing better these days, that's good, I'm happy for him.

I tell Dom that I have somewhere to go. Somewhere to be. I know he thinks I'm talking about Trish and I don't correct him. But his quiet comment stops me in my tracks as I slide out of the booth. He says my name and then:

"Thanks, kid."

I stare at him. I don't get it. He insisted on picking up the tab. "For what?"

"For coming back to us."


	9. Chapter 9

Nice neighborhood - fancy new apartments and houses that weren't here when I was last in town. But I find the address easy enough, slow the Indian outside a small, but new painted place with flowers in the front yard. There's a ramp out front, but I don't really process that, not until the guy who answers the door does so in a wheelchair.

I kept the piece of paper Randle gave me. I called.

Wheelchair Guy introduces himself, shakes my hand and spins around, expecting me to follow.

The place is clean, for a guy's house, I guess. The furniture is kind of shoved against the walls, but that lets him get around in the chair and he's quick, leads me through to the kitchen. Two other guys are at the table, cards and poker chips in the middle.

One, the older one, has a burn scar down one half of his face, his ear melted away. The younger guy looks whole. I'm grateful for that, I would have felt like a fraud if this was some kind of 'damage club'.

"Beer." The guy in the wheelchair points to a couple of six packs on the counter as I take a seat.

"And I'm Stu," the scarred guy holds out his hand, shooting the host a look that lets him know his hosting skills suck.

I shake his hand, say hello, and nod hello at the last guy. He's younger than me, and way younger than the other two. He smiles. Slowly.

"I'm Ben..." he pauses, in case I don't need the next clue, but I do."...Giametti."

I blink. "_Little Spaghetti?"_

He grins. "One of 'em."

"You know each other?" Wheelchair Guy queries.

"Sure, he used to be my brother Carlo's boss, huh?" _Carlo_. I never called Spaghetti 'Carlo' in my life. And I never kept up with the names of all his kid brothers. Little Spaghetti leans back dramatically, arms wide. "You boys are in the presence of greaser royalty here. This is Tim Shepard, used to run the toughest gang in the neighborhood, back in the day."

Stu snorts.

Ben leans over and rubs the fabric of Stu's shirt sleeve in his fingers. He sends a stage whisper my way, "_Soc_." He pulls a face.

"Shut up and deal." Stu flicks a pretzel at Spaghetti's kid brother. "Before I remind you what side of the tracks I got drug up on. A man can appreciate nice threads without being a South side candy ass." He smooths an invisible wrinkle out of his shirt. His hand is scarred too.

They laugh and get to the game. I let them deal me in and I go through the motions. Try to relax.

"Tim?" the guy in the wheelchair, _Donnie_, I try to think of him by name, is asking me a question.

"Sorry. What?"

"You wanna get a smoke?" He gestures to the back porch. I shrug, but I follow him.

"My wife puts up with the rest of it, but she hates these things in the house." He pulls out a kick ass cigar and offers me one. I shake my head and light a weed. No wonder the house looked nice, if he has a wife. I figure she must have decided to stick by him, injury and all. "...she wants it all new looking still, we only moved here last year, after the wedding..."

I wasn't hearing everything he said, but that snaps me back to listening.

Donnie watches me for a second. "Okay. So I was gonna let you ease in, play a few hands, maybe save the talking 'til next time, but you didn't seem very comfortable."

"You just got married?" I'm aware I'm interrupting.

He nods. "You wanna make some big lesson out of that? _Life goes on_? That kind of shit?"

I stare.

"Forget it, man, I ain't a shrink, none of us are. Just some guys who ain't gonna freak, you mention something that ordinary people don't wanna hear." He shrugs. "Talk. Don't talk. Up to you."

I mumble that I expected to see Randle here.

"Yeah, usually. He said you might prefer it if he didn't show tonight." Donnie shrugs. "Said to say though, that you were right about Dallas, but that's a different group of guys, you got that in common with. I ain't never been to Texas, so I guess Steve knows what he's talking about."

"I owe him an apology." I sigh. "I owe a lot of people an apology."

"Your family?" When I look surprised, Donnie shrugs. "Comes with the territory, it seems. Stu reckons a person can afford to take out their shit on the people they trust the most."

God help my brothers, I think. And, unexpectedly, that makes me smile.

"So. If you talk, what are you talking about? I was Eleven Bravo, pure and simple, but Stu was a helicopter mechanic and Ben was AG on a 107, like Steve's."

It's been a while, but the sounds fall off my tongue, "LRRP."

He nods. And I know that he knows. I don't have to explain. Don't have to try to convey the fact that six men can go out on their own, for days - weeks, even - setting their own schedule, living by rules that no one ever wrote down. Sleeping in the jungle, crawling through territory that don't exist on any carefully colored map. Killing or being killed.

And the fact that I don't have to explain is like a pressure valve that just got loosened. Fuck, I do owe Randle an apology.

Donnie smiles around the stub of his cigar. I finished my weed without even noticing.

"So. You any good with cards, or what?" He wheels himself inside and I follow.

xXXXx

I take a detour, on my way home. My internal map of the area won't help, because I never did know where Randle lived. But this house I know. Slept on their couch once, if my memory serves. I notice that there's a new door and the porch is fresh painted. Everything changes, I guess.

Darry Curtis tells me the address I need, but looks as if he ain't sure whether he oughta. I wonder what Randle told him about me.

I pull up next to a front yard littered with kids' toys; a tiny bike, piles of battered cars and a catcher's mitt on the walk, a single roller skate that I avoid on the porch steps.

As I reach the top, a shriek goes up from inside the house: "The motorcycle man is here!"

"Hello, Motorcycle Man." Evie smiles at me, opening the screen door. I tell her I won't come in, I just want to talk to Randle. He appears and walks out on the porch with me.

"I went to Donnie's." I tell him. He nods, not making it easy for me. And why should he? I tell him I was a prick for what I said, about Dallas. And that I appreciate what he was trying to do for me. I tell him thanks again, for the use of his stuff.

"Seems like you took a long road home," he comments. "You got here in the end, though."

_Roots'll pull a man back, Shep._

Yeah.

I nod, in answer to both of them.

Not quite all the way though. Not yet.


	10. Chapter 10

**A/N: No matter how I tried, this final chapter kept slipping out of Tim's POV and yet - for me - it clearly belonged in this story, not as a side fic. I hope you will forgive the switch at this late stage.**

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><p><em><strong>Trish's POV...<strong>_

I hate these chairs. I always hated these chairs, they're fucking uncomfortable.

The sound of the bottle hitting the table is loud, when I misjudge the distance slightly in putting it down. But then any sound is loud in this house.

I wonder why I never got rid of these chairs. Ain't no one else to care, to offer an opinion. Frannie wouldn't want them, in her midget sized apartment, but Barb might have a use for them, I could get new ones from somewhere, if she took them. I don't know why it never occurred to me to change them before. Kitchen chairs just..._are_, though, ain't they? I mean, these gotta be as old as me. Older. I don't remember Mom buying them, don't remember a time when they wasn't in the house.

I light another cigarette and stare at the chair on the other side of the kitchen table. It would be just as uncomfortable, if I moved around to that one. But I always sit in this one, back to the ice box, facing the door to the entryway.

Why? Because this was always 'my seat', even though they are all identical? Because Barb and Frannie sat on the other side of the table? Mickey tucked back in the corner, dropping whatever he didn't want into Reb's waiting mouth, despite Mom telling him 'not to feed that dirty animal at the table'?

There used to be other chairs too, I do remember that. I know Mom threw out the mismatched one from the end, the '_head of the table_', when Dad shot through. Said it gave her more elbow room in front of the stove. And I know the last one is in her bedroom.

Joey always sat facing the window, one eye on the weather, because he wanted to be outside.

Before I even think about it, I'm climbing to my feet and slinging two chairs out onto the back stoop. That gives me room to drag the table around, which changes the look of the kitchen completely.

"This is my house," I announce to the empty room, "I can do what the hell I want. I don't haveta sit around and wait for nothing, or nobody." Because keeping things the same don't work anyhow.

I did that. I waited. For nothing.

Then I failed at moving on, because it don't hardly count as moving on when all you do is step sideways, not forwards.

And then I let him back, yesterday, and where did that get me?

I push open the door to Mom's room. It ain't a shrine. The three of us packed up her clothes and stuff, Frannie cleaned, Barb took one of the dressers. It's just an empty room now; bed, night tables, the dresser with the broken drawer.

And the chair that's coming back to the kitchen with me.

It's when I put my hand on it, to pick it up, that I feel the marks cut into it and the memory comes rushing back. This is how, even if they all got moved around, Mom knew which one it was. My fingers trace the carving, as I wonder how many times she did the same thing, how many times she remembered ripping him a new one for testing out his first switch on the chairback. How many times she said his name quietly, like I am now, going over the letters scratched into the wood.

"You idiot," I mutter, sliding to the floor, my hand still on the 'J'. "You frigging idiot. If you'd chose anything else, you coulda blamed Mickey. Or me. Why'd you do your own frigging name, Joey?"

People say that sometimes it's 'too cold for snow'. Never made much sense to me. But maybe it's the same principal for 'too painful for tears'? I could get on board with that. I lay my head on the chair, breathing around the knot of hurt inside me that never loosens.

I don't even jump when I hear my name called.

They sound the same. Maybe that's one reason why...No, that ain't fair to Dom.

"_Do you got a type, then?"_

"_Sure." I sounded weary to myself. "Boys in gangs. Men in prison. All the same type. I think I met a guy once, hadn't never been arrested, but maybe he was a liar."_

_Dom laughed. "And here I was, thinking I was special."_

"_Round here? 'Bout as unusual as a girl who don't let you...pick her up, just 'cause you buy her a drink."_

"_That what's happening? I'm...picking you up?"_

"_Buy me a drink and maybe we'll work out the answer to that."_

"What the hell? Why didn't you answer me? You alright?" Tim pulls up short when he sees me sitting on the floor, concern skittering across his face. I guess he came in the back door I left open. The idea that he might think I fell or something, makes me snort. Just a little. I stand up, tell him I'm just peachy, I'm moving furniture is all. He tries to take the chair off me, to carry it for me.

"Fuck off!" I wrench it away from him. "I got it." And I do. I kind of scrape the wall a little, but I get it where I want it, under the table just so. I reach for the vodka, look around for my glass and don't find it. Don't matter to me, only -

Tim's hand stops the bottle and takes it from me before it reaches my lips. He breathes out slow. "Can I say 'sorry' again? And will you hear me this time? For real?" I watch him carefully as he speaks, waiting for the catch. It's quiet when it comes: "I talked to Dom. I know about you an' him."

I take a step back. I know chicks who've been hospitalized for less, by men who were supposed to care about them.

Tim puts down the bottle, careful like, on the counter top. Real careful. He turns it around, studies it like he's reading the label, as he says, "Did I ever tell you 'thank you'? For the way you looked after me when my friend, Dallas, died?"

I stare at him, unable to form a reaction, a response.

"Did I ever tell you 'thank you' for all the times you patched me up?" His eyes drag up, to meet mine.

I open my mouth, but close it again a second later.

"This one time, down range, I was hurt and I think maybe I was out of it, 'cause I was convinced you was there. An' I knew that meant I was gonna be okay." Tim looks like he didn't expect to tell me that, like the words surprised him as much as me. He takes a step closer. "Trish? I wanna come home."

"Like yesterday, you mean? Like, you gonna split the second I leave the room?" I can't help the anger. I can't help it. But. Oh, God. But...

Tim goes to say something but settles for shaking his head. He ignores the chairs I just rearranged and leans back on the edge on the table, rubbing his hands on his jeans' pockets, like his palms itch. Or he's nervous. Which is weird.

My heartbeat ricochets between hope and fear, as I tell him, "I can't do it like we did it before. I won't sit around, in case you wanna drop by."

"I don't want it like that, neither." He holds my gaze and I take a tiny step towards him. I know he knows, but it can't fester between us. I have to be sure. I have to be so sure.

"I slept with your brother."

"I know." The calm tone of his voice ain't matched by what's going on behind his eyes.

"I ain't sorry about it." My defiance is undermined by the fact I have to bite my lip to keep it from trembling.

"I know." He takes a steadying breath. "That's okay. I just...need..." I close the last distance between us, before he loses it, before he breaks. He wraps his arms around me. I can feel him breathing into my hair. Eventually he sighs. "I ain't exactly offering you a fair deal. I'm kind of fucked up. You need to know that."

"That why you're here? So's I can patch you up again?" I don't mean it cruel, but I need to know. I can't see him but I feel Tim shake his head.

"Ain't sure I'm fixable this time."

"Don't sweat it. I ain't exactly stable myself." I could call that nearly empty vodka bottle as a witness.

Tim moves, holding me away at arms' length, then he starts pacing. I follow him through to the front room, as he mumbles, "I ain't kidding, Trish. It's like a piece of me got left over there. Or I brought it back, or something." He rubs his eyes. He looks real tired. "Whatever it is, I ain't how I was."

"Why? What happened to you?"

"See, that's the thing. I can't tell you. I don't wanna tell you." He gestures with his hand in a vague direction. "_That_. That needs to not touch you. I need some part of my life that ain't dirty with all of that." Throwing himself onto the couch, he leans his elbows on his knees. "But it's gonna happen, I know it will. 'Cause..." I lose the rest of what he says, because he puts his face into his hands, but it's something about 'nightmares'. I go right in front of him, challenge,

"But you wanna be here?" He looks up at me, confused. I check again. "You wanna be _here_? With me? Just me. Just _us_." Tim nods and goes to stand but I push his shoulder, making him keep his seat and I climb onto his lap, pinning him against the back of the couch. "Be careful what you wish for, Shepard." I kiss him. Kiss him until we're slipped sideways, lying down with his arms around me, curled around each other like we've been here always.

Tim chuckles. "I didn't ask you, did I? What you wanted?"

"Maybe I got it anyway." I smile at him. I feel like smiling a whole lot. He smiles back. He still looks tired, but Jeez, it's better when he smiles.

"I want you to know, it ain't all bad. I ain't such a dick as I was, back when we was kids."

I raise my eyebrows. "Are you apologizing, for the shitty way you treated me back then?"

"I guess. Seem to be doing a lot of that."

"You on Curly's program, or somethin'?"

He looks surprised. "You know 'bout Curly?"

"Ain't I been serving him neat Coca Cola all these months? Yeah, I know about Curly. Knew him before...before he did what he did. Seems like he hadda hit the bottom to come back on up, y'know?"

"Yeah." Tim smiles again, to himself this time. "I know."

We stay there for a while, cuddling, quiet, until I can't stop myself asking, "Are you really not gonna tell me about all where you've been?"

"Uh." I feel him tense up, then make himself relax again. "Not about over there. But I'd like to tell you about some of the rest. I was at the Grand Canyon one time. An' I seen them trees you used to talk about, the big fuckers." Holy God, he remembered me saying I wanted to see the redwoods? I ask him what they were like and, predictably, he answers, "_Big_." I roll my eyes and he winks. "Janssen said they was –"

"Who's Janssen?"

Tim swallows. Then he concentrates on moving a strand of hair off my face and tells me, "He was my buddy. He died. He was...I think you woulda liked him."

"He look after you?"

"We looked after each other."

"Then I woulda liked him." That seems to make Tim happy, although he goes on to frown a little.

"I don't need no nursemaid, that ain't what I'm saying 'bout us. I want us to be together is all."

"You wanna live here, with me, in this house?"

There's more than a trace of the old cockiness as he says, "Yup."

"What about dough? I got two part time jobs but I ain't pulling in that much an' I ain't itching to see you hauled in for anything illegal."

Tim Shepard looks mighty pleased with himself as he informs me casually, "Oh. That. Yeah. I got a job. Turns out I know a guy needs a motorcycle specialist at his garage. Figure I might see if I can stick workin' with him."

**The End**

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><p><strong>So, this is where I'm leaving it. Thoughts? <strong>


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